Ever get hit with the realization that you should have asked for help three mistakes ago? One incident from when I was a science apprentice continues to haunt me. I was an undergrad working in a cell biology lab. Among my regular tasks were two that involved different kinds of cuvettes–small rectangular tubes. One was used to assess bacterial growth; you put a sample of bacteria in liquid culture in the cuvette and measured how much light was blocked by the bacteria. That one was clear; the other cuvette had metal sides for conducting electrical current. It was used to punch holes in bacterial cell walls to allow customized DNA molecules inside.
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Becoming People of the Third Way
This article first appeared in Campus Calling, InterVarsity’s Faculty Ministry monthly newsletter and is reposted here by permission. This represents my parting thoughts and hopes as outgoing ESN Director for Christian presence in academia.
I suspect I’m not alone in feeling left out of many of the discussions going on in our various public squares—political or academic. Often, it seems only two options are on offer, neither of which I can fully embrace. And it feels like the embrace of the one is to join a “side” against others who become more than someone with whom I disagree. They become enemies. And not enemies I seek to love as the gospel would bid me. They are people who we pigeonhole and demonize.
A new book by Shirley A. Mullen, Claiming the Courageous Middle[1] has provoked me afresh to think about the possibilities of the middle as one of those who pursues a third way between our reductionistic binaries. Mullen, formerly president of Houghton College, found herself in many situations where she was asked to take sides where she felt there were not simple right or wrong choices. It took courage, but on these, she chose to claim the middle, seeking, not compromise, but better answers.
I believe this idea of the courageous middle or becoming people of the third way fits hand and glove with our calling as Christian academics:
- Knowing our finiteness and fallenness, we are people committed to intellectual humility, knowing the One who is True but aware of our own limited grasp of that truth.
- Our commitment to the dignity of persons restrains us from demonizing those who share with us the imago dei. Believing that all are of value, we look for the God-given longings, insights, and contributions of all people that must be present in good resolutions that serve the common good.
- As observers of the golden rule, we are those who choose to afford those who disagree with us the attentive hearing we ourselves want.
- Having been reconciled to God and to others through Christ, we pursue peacemaking rather than adversarial relationships.
Mary Simpson Poplin, Senior Research Fellow and Professor Emerita at the School of Educational Studies of Claremont Graduate Universities gave a seminar in the College of Education at The Ohio State University that I was privileged to attend. She described a challenge her School, known for its emphasis on social justice, was facing. Public schools who hired their graduates had a problem. While minority students experienced inclusion, their academic performance was not meeting testing standards. The schools were refusing to hire more of their graduates. The temptation was strong to defend the School’s curriculum and to rail against standardized testing, resulting in an impasse. Mary had been struck with how many times she encountered the biblical injunction “Do not turn to your left or to your right.” As she thought about what that could mean in this situation, she decided to collaborate with a colleague to fashion an approach to effective teaching that strengthened content preparation while maintaining the School’s commitment to social justice, improving student performance in multiethnic school systems. All because Mary Poplin dared to claim the courageous middle and propose a third way.
As you can see, choosing the third way is not one of wishy-washy compromise. Often one runs the risk of attack from both ‘sides.’ Yet in our fraught times, the choice is between ratcheting up conflict, with gloating winners and losers seeking payback and taking risks to promote greater understanding, better solutions that serve the common good, that are win-win. And sometimes, because we come at questions from a different place, we may be able to reframe discussions.
Might there be ways the Lord could be inviting you to pursue the third way and step into the courageous middle? Might that be through the readings you choose, the discussions you have in classes and the assignments you give? What role will you take when departmental conflicts arise? How will you counsel a student group you advise when they want to engage in advocacy around a politically fraught issue?
You might wonder what this means for voting when there may be only two choices. The best I know is to gather information and make the best choice you can, hopefully for people of character who have shown commitments to the common good. But also realize that that decision doesn’t commit you to a side, an us versus them polemic. It helps me to think that both before and after that vote, we are citizens in the same boat seeking what we think is the good society.
Might God be calling us to live as people of the third way, in the pursuit of societal concord instead of discord? The alternatives are not pleasant. Civil conflict. Political violence. Chaos and anarchy or autocracy. It can happen here and this realization should be driving us to our knees. Instead of huddling on the sidelines or in “enlightened” Christian enclaves, might it be time to claim the courageous middle of the third way with our neighbors, students, and colleagues? We have no assurance of the outcome. But will we be found faithful in such a time as this?
[1] Shirley A. Mullen, Claiming the Courageous Middle (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2024. A review of the book may be accessed at my blog: https://bobonbooks.com/2024/07/19/review-claiming-the-courageous-middle/
Passing the Baton at the Emerging Scholars Network
It has been a profound privilege to lead the Emerging Scholars Network over the past five years, and in particular, through the COVID pandemic. We launched ESN Conversations which now has over sixty recorded conversations on our YouTube channel. We addressed issues of racism, anti-Asian hate and published the first article on Critical Race Theory within InterVarsity. And we began an online post-doc group, with the help of Washington University post-doc/now faculty member, Ben Wormleighton. I was very pleased to work with the multi-talented Hannah Eagleson to publish Scholars Compass.
My last day with InterVarsity and the Emerging Scholars Network will be this Saturday, August 31. I will be completing forty-eight years with InterVarsity, working in both Undergraduate and Graduate and Faculty Ministry. I am so grateful for the opportunity to know Christ and make Him known among students and faculty. And I am profoundly grateful for all those I’ve worked with: students, faculty, donors, and colleagues, including one of those colleagues who will succeed me as the director of the Emerging Scholars Network.
Beginning September 1, Jamie Noyd will serve as the new director of the Emerging Scholars Network and I could not be happier with this choice! I first met Jamie at one of Graduate and Faculty Ministry’s Following Christ conferences in 2008. Jamie was working with a church-based ministry serving graduate students at the University of Cincinnati (UC). She asked if we could stay in touch because she appreciated the opportunity to exchange ideas with others working with grad students.
That led to teaming up in planning retreats for OSU and UC grad students and a growing appreciation for the spiritual and intellectual depth she brought to work with students. When things changed in her relationship with those who had supported her work, it was my delight to hire her to join our team, continuing her work at UC. Over the next years, she expanded the work with grad students and launched faculty ministry, working with a number of faculty groups at UC, which she continues to do. She also began working with faculty at Northern Kentucky University, where her father had been a professor.
When I transitioned from leading the work in Ohio Valley in 2020, Jamie was one of two people to take over leadership of that work. Then COVID hit and our Faculty Ministry team started working with creating online pilgrimages. Jamie joined our team to lead this effort, coordinating four such pilgrimages, as well as several in person pilgrimages. These were huge successes, serving faculty who were exhausted by the heavy workloads connected with transitioning to online teaching during the pandemic.
This emphasis on pilgrimage is an essential aspect of Jamie’s life. Her doctoral dissertation at Union Institute and University was titled, “Literary Pilgrimage: Interpreting Literature at the Intersection of Story, Place, and Reader.” On her LinkedIn profile she writes:
“By walking the path of story people become aware of the narratives that are shaping their lives, along with nourishing stories that are deeply rooted in their hearts. Along this way they step into a holy retelling of their stories. This unfolds through the practices of pilgrimage that invite them into the stories of scripture, of places, and of other people. As they engage with these narratives, walk and pray alone and with companions, and take steps along this life path with expectancy, God’s good story begins to inhabit their being. This good story celebrates life in all its beauty and goodness, heals souls, and creates community as people become more deeply rooted in God’s love together.”
This so fits the work of the Emerging Scholars Network. We call our newsletter “Scholar’s Journey,” reflecting our sense that our mission is to encourage and equip scholars who follow Jesus on their journey from undergraduate college, through graduate and post-doctoral work and into faculty or other roles. Jamie’s vision for that pilgrimage and her many years of walking with students and faculty on their pilgrimages suits her so well for this work. In addition, Jamie is a skilled organizer, writer (including a number of articles for ESN), and has worked with a variety of online formats.
Jamie is coming off of sabbatical September 1. To not clutter her sabbatical with ESN responsibilities, we decided ESN will take a hiatus for a short period as she transitions into the role. If you want to welcome her into this role, she’d love to hear from you AFTER September 1. Just drop a comment in the blog.
I am so grateful for all of you who have engaged with the Emerging Scholars Network over the years and I hope you will join me in praying for Jamie as she leads ESN in this next leg of the journey!
Science Corner: A Priest, a Poet and a Mathematician Walk into an Abbey
I recently had the great privilege to spend 9 days in London with my family on a sort of mini-sabbatical after 15 years of service at my day job. A subtle but recurring theme to the visit was how often religion and science came up together. For starters, we patronized several bookstores, and every time the science section and the religion section were in the same room. Now, in a suburban Barnes & Noble in the US, that would be unremarkable because the whole store is basically one room. But these were older buildings, more warren than warehouse, where those two sections might fill an entire room. Granted, I can’t be certain these were fully independent observations; all the stores may be operated by the same parent company behind the scenes and thus share organizational guidelines, just as so many of the seemingly bespoke pubs had been bought up and homogenized with a common menu. Still, the topic pairing stood out to me.
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Science Corner: Dreaming in the Academic Clouds
So far, the explanation for dreams which resonated most for me came from Anil Seth’s book Being You. The overall thesis of the book is that our conscious experiences are really predictions about the world around us which are updated based on input from our senses. Dreams, then, are what happens when the predictive aspect is decoupled from sensory corrections. Thus our dreams contain elements from our actual experiences but unconstrained by the need to correspond to anything, even themselves moment-to-moment. That doesn’t mean dreams cannot ever be prophetic or a medium of communication from God, as the Bible describes in the cases of Daniel and the Josephs. But it helps me make sense of my typical boy-I-hope-that-wasn’t-a-divine-message dreams.
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